Kingdom of Cages Read Free Page A

and lavender glow of the sunset,
     onto one of the marsh’s tiny islands, and watch the water birds in their thousands take flight all around him.
    Oh, Tam spent a great deal of time outdoors, in the villages for which he was administrator, but those were fenced and protected
     areas, not the pristine wilderness, not what he saw through the window. That beauty remained forever out of reach, past the
     glass, past the fences.
    Just once,
Tam thought.
What could it hurt?
    Years of conditioning raised a surge of guilt in him at the thought, and that guilt activated his Conscience implant.
    Are you looking out the window, Tam?
it asked him.
Are you thinking of walking in the marsh?
    The Conscience implant couldn’t actually read thoughts, but it could measure the presence of chemicals indicating anxiety,
     or guilt, and ask probing questions. Tam took a deep breath and tried to concentrate on the world inside, on his home and
     family. This time he was not successful. His Conscience tasted the continuing guilt in his mind and knew its guess was right.
    We’d be no better than the ones who tear their worlds apart and try to turn them into farms. Pandora must be protected.
    Tam shook his head. “Yes, yes, I know,” he murmured to his Conscience. “I’m not going to break out. Really.”
    It was dark enough outside that Tam could see his own reflection in the window glass. It showed him a spare man, whose black
     trousers, white shirt, and white-on-white patterned vest hung on him as if he’d lost a lot of weight recently. His medium
     brown skin was still clear, but his thick black hair swept back from a high forehead that showed the lines of age and worry.
     His dark eyes set above his Roman nose sagged tiredly at the corners.
    It had been ten years since the meeting in which the Authority had bullied Pandora into seeking answers to the Diversity Crisis,
     the death that stalked across the Called. But after ten years of experiments, analysis, and gathering more data than could
     ever be used, their theory of how to produce a universal cure was still just theory.
    The Authority was getting restless. The failure of the second delegation to Earth had only made that restlessness worse. The
     Authority might say they were no government, that they were just merchants and go-betweens, but they knew their future was
     bound completely up in the future of the Called, and they were not going to let that future go.
    A new reflection moved in the glass. Tam focused on the translucent image and saw that a thin young man had come to stand
     behind him. The man’s pale skin, white tunic, and white-striped trousers stood out sharply against the background of ferns
     and drooping tropical greens in the big bubble terrarium that dominated the center of the lobby.
    “Basante. You’re all I need right now,” Tam whispered aloud, almost without realizing he was doing it.
That is one of the problems with Consciences,
he thought to himself.
You end up talking to yourself a lot.
    Basante is part of your family,
Tam’s Conscience reminded him.
    Maybe he’ll go away.
Tam looked past their reflections to what he could still see of the marsh. The thumb-sized luminescent flies their ancestors
     had nicknamed will-o’-the-wisps danced over the waters and dotted the reeds, as if the stars had come down to play.
    A fanciful image. Tam smiled softly to himself.
    Tam focused on the reflections again. Basante was still there. In fact, he looked ready to wait all night.
    Nothing else for it, then.
Tam turned. “Good evening, Experimenter Basante. I thought you were retiring for some private time.” They both had spent
     all afternoon and most of the evening hearing the report of the latest delegation to the Called. Their conclusions were as
     expected. Trying to find a cure for the Diversity Crisis one planet at a time would involve making massive changes to each
     planet’s biosphere for the sake of its human inhabitants, which was completely